another spot to wait. “Things here are getting out of hand. Lancroft’s pestilence has had more far-reaching implications than I’d previously feared. The Half Breeds are replenishing their numbers.”
Shifting into his hulking two-legged form, Liam clenched his clawed hands into fists and growled, “There ain’t no Half Breeds after that pestilence had its way with this country.”
“The wretches were trimmed back in number, but not culled,” Randolph said. “The ones who’ve poked their noses out of their dens since Lancroft’s plague have either been killed by it or adapted to endure it. I found a pack of them in the Badlands. They were far from the miserable creatures that were stricken down by the Mud Flu. If not for their scent, I may have mistaken them for another breed entirely.”
When the light of the moon touched Kawosa’s features, deep wrinkles showed upon his cheeks and beneath his eyes. His sunken chest swelled beneath the clothes that had been stolen several miles ago, and his teeth became chipped pieces of ivory wedged into his jaw. “You know, when the Half Breeds first appeared in the desert to the west, they weren’t much more than wolves with eyes that belonged in the face of a man. They reverted to their human form every few weeks, cursing their lot in life. Some say the Breaking as we know it now is a blessing. The human dies as the bones are snapped, relieving them of their torment.” Kawosa’s tone during those last few words was biting and resentful, an effect that was heightened even more by the mocking sneer on his face. “They shifted into their quivering, infantile bodies to slink into holes they’d dug within earshot of human villages. Pathetic. As the Breaking became more intense, they became stronger. Like blades forged in hotter fires, they grew longer legs, stronger jaws, sharper claws, until they became the terrors that plague us now. And today, they have been reborn again.”
“Why didn’t you mention this, Randolph?” Liam asked.
“After what you did in Kansas City? You’d be more likely to take these wretches as pets.”
“And what’s stopping me from doing so now?”
“I am,” Kawosa replied.
Liam’s first impulse was to shift into something with more fur so he could stand it up on end. One subtle change in the other being’s eyes was enough to show him the error in that line of thought.
After a sniffing breath, Liam grunted, “Fine. What’s next, then?”
“We find the new Half Breeds,” Kawosa said. “And we see what good they can do us.”
Now it was Randolph’s turn to be taken aback. “What?”
Kawosa smiled as if the muscles needed to perform the action were too far out of practice to do it properly. Despite its awkwardness, it was the most genuine gesture he’d made so far. “Those Amriany nomads have a recipe for everything. They have enough tricks to make the Skinners jealous and now they have a presence here. The Skinners are broadening their horizons, thanks to scum like Lancroft, but they’ve never seen the likes of this new breed, correct?”
Amused once again, Liam watched Randolph carefully until the answer came.
“Probably not.”
“Then,” Kawosa growled as he shifted into a lean, vaguely canine form, “let us introduce them.”
Chapter Fifteen
“I’m really getting sick of this place,” Cole griped. As much as he’d been hoping to hear differently from the girls at Pinups, the Skipping Temple that Lancroft had built was still intact enough for the Dryads to send them there. Despite a layer of dust thick enough to completely obscure the symbols on the temple walls, the basement was in relatively good condition. The workshop wasn’t completely collapsed, but several of the tables had been knocked over, and there wasn’t one stack of the supplies Cole had left. The small windows looking up into the yard were blocked by sections of the wall that had fallen in the controlled explosion. It wouldn’t pass any builder’s safety code, but the house was still standing.
Standing next to one of the cracked cement walls in the workshop, Rico dragged his hand across a section marred by a road map of cracks. “This house was either built really well or Lancroft didn’t want it scrapped all the way.”
Prophet walked into the workshop from the landing of the stairs that went up to the kitchen. “He sure as hell didn’t want to come back that way,” he said while patting the dust off his dark gray jacket. “All I can see back there is about one and a half stairs before the rubble starts. If anyone’s under there, they’re toast. You think that’s funny, Cole?”
“No.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
“Because with that dust you just kicked up, you remind me of a black Pigpen.”
Scowling and coughing within his gritty cloud of cement powder, Prophet waved his arms and strode into a clearer section of air. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Suddenly, Rico couldn’t stop laughing. “He means that dirty kid from the Charlie Brown cartoons. Oh man, you do look like—”
“With all the shit happening around here, you’re still thinking about goddamn cartoons?” Prophet griped.
Once Cole regained control of himself, he said, “It’s either that or drive myself crazy thinking about everything. Small doses of what passes for reality plus a few cartoons thrown in makes it all easier to manage.”
Even though Prophet obviously wanted to argue, he let it go. “Did you find whatever it was you were looking for?”
“No,” Cole said. “I found a big mess, just like I thought I would. You ready to go now, Rico?”
“Grab some of those jars and we’ll take them back with us.”
“What about those jars I brought back the first time? I almost forgot about those.”
“I had a look at a few of ‘em. Nymar blood. It’s not quite the stuff we see too often, but it’s Nymar, all right. We’ll need someone to take a closer look to know more than that. Forget that now. We still need to check out the other downstairs.”
“I was already there,” Cole said. “I told you about that body I found.”
“We’re here to look again.” Rico grunted. “So that’s what we’ll do. We got a little while before the nymphs can do their thing to get us out of here.”
“Doesn’t there have to be girls on both ends of the bridge to let us go through?” Prophet asked.
Cole sounded like an old pro when he said, “The Skipping Temple was made to be activated remotely. At least, it’s the nymph version of remote activation. Just don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah,” Rico said as he headed through the temple and into the dissection room. “If something goes wrong to fry us while we’re in Never Never Land or whatever else you wanna call the space in between strip clubs, we probably won’t feel a thing.”
“What if the beads won’t even light up and we’re stuck here?”
“Then we find another way out. Just stop asking so many goddamn questions so we can do what we came to do.”
Every other time he’d been in the dissection room, Cole had needed a moment to let his eyes adjust to the stark lighting and immaculately cleaned, reflective metallic surfaces. Now, the only light in the room came from one very stubborn fluorescent tube, the flashlights the Skinners had brought with them and the dim glow emanating from behind the hidden doorway that led to the dank brick hallway below. The lights down there ran on a power source of their own, which probably wasn’t anything more exotic than a spare generator or separate line spliced from the neighbors.
Rico was a quarter of the way down the narrow staircase when a scraping sound drifted up from below. All three men froze. Cole bypassed the harness that was rigged upside down as Rico had suggested and went for the holster beneath his coat on his hip. He drew the .45, which sent the metallic sound of his pistol slide rattling down the hallway. After that, more restless noises emanated from the musty depths.
Narrowing his eyes and shoving past Cole to get down the stairs, Rico shouted, “Someone down there?”
No voices responded, but the unmistakable shuffle of footsteps drifted up to Cole’s ears.
